Welcome to the Community

Entering any new space can be overwhelming. So many conversations and threads - where do we even begin! In this post, we'll give you a rundown of all the spaces in Metadecidim, help you find your way, and hopefully answer any questions you may have when getting started.

Ready? Let's take the tour! 👫🗺

 Where am I?

You are in Metadecidim, the community of Decidim, the free software digital platform for participatory democracy. Since its beginnings, the project has had an active, diverse and increasingly global community. Here is a map to guide you and locate each space:

What can I do here?

In Metadecidim you can take part in different collaboration spaces, sign up for the next community meeting and much more: 

Participate

📍 We have different open collaboration spaces to improve all aspects of the platform. If you join the Decidim Association, there are also spaces to participate in governance of the community. Currently, the open participation processes are:

• Propose new features
• Report a bug
• Redesign Decidim
• Improve documentation
• Translate Decidim into your language

💁‍♀️ Who might be interested: Anyone who interacts with the platform, either as a participant or someone who manages the admin panel, or contributes to the code.

Meetings

📍 These are community meetings where we discuss issues that are current or related to the future of the project. They are open, reflective and collaborative spaces for participation on the multiple dimensions of the Decidim project to share experiences of using Decidim, discuss and present new features, answer questions and empower civil society to take ownership of the tool, contribute to its development and be partners in its construction.

💁‍♀️ Who might be interested: city officials or other institutions, hackers, researchers, experts, social organizations and citizens in general; that is, anyone interested in thinking, defining and implementing improvements.

Within the meetings, there is a specific type, called LABs Metadecidim, which are an open and collaborative research space aimed at addressing key problems for the development of the Decidim platform and online democracy. This space for research and scientific helps guide the development work of Decidim, builds networks and communities of experts interested in contributing to this development on its different fronts, contributes to carrying out applied or theoretical research around Decidim and constitutes an open place for research and debate on network democracy in a broader sense.

💁‍♀️ Who might be interested: universities, research groups and centers, specialized companies, experts, professionals, hackers and expert citizens.
 

Decidim Fest

📍 Decidim Fest is the big annual event for anyone that belongs to the community. It is a conference to address issues that intersect with free technologies and democracy. Each year a theme for reflection and debate is chosen and people of relevance are invited to participate. Of course, there is always a specific space for members of the community to exchange experiences and discuss the future of the project.

💁‍♀️ Who might be interested: anyone who is already part of the community, and anyone who is curious and interested in learning more about the project.

Our Governance

📍 This is the governance space of the community. We self-organize through the Decidim Association, a private non-profit association. You can become a member and participate in the different committees and working groups. 

The Association is formed by different work and decision spaces. Currently, the active groups are:

• The General Assembly: a space in which the sovereignty of the Association resides, where issues related to the governance of the community are discussed and decided. To be able to participate in this space you must be a member of the Association.
• Coordination Committee: Manages and represents the Association. Its members are elected by the General Assembly.
• Technopolitical Committee: It is one of the currently active thematic committees. Dedicated to the technopolitical issues of the project.
• Research Committee: It is one of the currently active thematic committees. Dedicated to empowering the community of Metadecidim researchers.
  
  

💁‍♀️ Who might be interested: people who are already part of the community and who want to get involved in organizing it.

News

📍 To stay up to date with the latest: latest news, monthly newsletters and other interesting news to the community. 

💁‍♀️ Who might be interested: anyone who passes by and wants to have a quick input of the latest.

Chat

📍 The chat is an instant messaging channel where you can have conversations in an agile way, solve doubts or receive help from other participants. There are different rooms depending on the theme. In this space you can also quickly create and organize work groups, but no decisions are made.

💁‍♀️ Who might be interested: probably people like you, who are just getting to know us. Behind all this there are people too 🤗, and we'll be happy to welcome you and try to answer any questions you may have. Was something not covered? Let us know in the General room, so we can improve this guide for the future.